In This Blog:
- ➤The Chief of Staff Job Description: Why Resumes Don’t Tell You Everything You Need to Know
- ➤The 6 Core Competencies of a High-Performing Remote Chief of Staff
- ➤Hiring Wrong Has a Cost You Won’t See Until It’s Too Late
- ➤Why Australian Businesses Are Finding This Competency Set Remotely
- ➤FAQs
- ➤Don’t Stop With CoS Resumes. Ask Questions
You’re finally making the call to hire a chief of staff. Good on you.
On your screen: file after file of resumes, with polished LinkedIn profiles to match. In your inbox, message after message from applicants, all carrying the same title.
According to their cover letters, everyone’s a “strategic, detail-oriented self-starter.” Everyone boasts of Chief of Staff skills that make them the “perfect fit” for the role. And if they’ve all done what they say they’ve done, how do you separate the great ones from the good?
Do they really answer: “What is the role of a Chief of Staff?” More importantly, how can you tell which one’s exactly the CoS you need within your business context, in your industry?
There are no standard tests or licensing bodies for CoSs. So when everyone says they’ve worked alongside a CEO in previous work experiences, you need to read well into competence and judgment, and know which profiles to bookmark.
Here are key competencies to watch out for, along with interviewing and hiring tips, as you prepare to hire your CoS.
What are Chief of Staff skills? (What are Chief of Staff qualifications?)
Chief of Staff skills are the practical abilities that allow someone to extend a CEO’s capacity by turning strategy into coordinated action, making sound decisions, and keeping priorities moving across the business. Qualifications can include experience in operations, consulting, finance, project leadership, or executive support, but no single career path or certification guarantees success. As the gatekeeper for the CEO, the strongest Chiefs of Staff are defined less by their job title and more by their judgment, communication, commercial awareness, and ability to solve complex business problems independently. These are the qualities employers should evaluate during hiring, rather than relying on resumes alone.
The Chief of Staff Job Description: Why Resumes Don’t Tell You Everything You Need to Know
“Chief of Staff” is among the senior roles out there without a fixed, by-the-book scope. There’s no universal identifier or template that details everything they do or are. Not in any kind of business. Not in any industry. And that is what makes hiring for the role a bit more complex than it ought to be.
For a Chief of Staff job description, capability and thought process are among the trail of breadcrumbs to follow. Resumes are important. But what they’re able to do, and how they think? Much more.
In fact, someone who’s never held the title might be a better fit than someone who has, simply because your business operations require the former’s strengths, working style, interpretation, and problem-solving approach.
McKinsey’s research on the Chief of Staff role found two distinct paths people walk on the road to a CoS position: 1. Focuses on administrative/governance support. 2. Involves actual decision-making authority (some call it “proxy authority”) to represent the CEO in selected decisions and discussions.
Two different responsibilities that belong under the same title.
We know what you’re thinking: these are sounding really intangible and subjective. And you’re right. But hang in there. The next section is what completes the puzzle of what comprises a smart hiring strategy for a CoS.
Illustration: Oliver is a Sydney-based fintech company principal who recently hired someone with “Chief of Staff, X-listed Company, X previous responsibilities” on their resume. It looked like she had the correct skillset. The bulleted list of duties she’d accomplished is practically textbook, in terms of what Hudson himself knows to be the “role of a CoS.”
But months in, Hudson discovers 90% calendar and travel coordination still had to go through him. Line by line. He learns that his new CoS had little involvement in actual business decisions in her previous experience.
Related Read: Apart from the CoS, discover how other roles are adding value to AU businesses with these articles— What Does a Project Manager Do? and Chief of Staff vs Operations Manager.
The 6 Core Competencies: High-Performing Remote Chief of Staff Skills
#1. Strategic Communication
Writing clearly and speaking well? Important, but not central to this number.
It’s the ability to take unstructured executive thinking (a rushed voice note, a half-finished idea in a meeting) and reconstruct it into something clear and organised. Into instructions that a team can follow, without leaving out the original intent. Without having to ask for clarifications on every item.
It works in reverse, too: gathering an overload of information from multiple departments, outlining, and condensing it. That way, an executive, or as this blog highlights, a CEO, can easily spot the main subjects and act on them.
Consider it the skill of interpreting and reframing information flow accurately and relevantly.
How To Test For It In An Interview: Give the candidate an unstructured brief. You can even use a real transcript from a meeting where two or more team members were rambling on about updates. Tell them to turn it into three practical, time-bound action items.
How to Score choices: Evaluate what they choose to retain and cut. Good strategic communicators strip away excess without dismantling intent.
#2. Cross-Functional Problem-Solving (Under Ambiguity)
A Chief of Staff frequently receives problems that aren’t always explicitly within the boundaries of a single department. Issues with sales can cross over to finance. Then to marketing. And so on. This means no single department is expected to come up with the resolution. In most cases, nobody does.
Since no department head takes full accountability for such concerns, these are shrugged off and unacknowledged. That is, until they can no longer be neglected.
When the same issues surface, someone with authority (the CEO or someone with authority to act on the CEO’s behalf, a.k.a. the CoS) untangles the lines and delegates them to who owns what.
How To Test For It In An Interview: Present a real or realistic scenario where a customer issue is spread out across more than one department at once. It could be a wrong quote from sales, a late delivery from operations, a disputed invoice from finance, or a customer promise marketing failed to make good on.
How to Score choices: Ask the candidate to walk through the steps they’d take to resolve it, and in what order. Strong candidates won’t just explain the order, but will name who they’d involve in the resolution.
#3. High Emotional Intelligence and Awareness
Any executive in a seat close enough to leadership will see and feel tensions. To a greater degree, a highly skilled Chief of Staff, who’s sensitive even to things invisible to everyone else in the company, like team dynamics, unspoken disagreements, or a change in plans or direction.
A Chief of Staff observes such circumstances and goes beyond mere observation:
Proactively analyze internal patterns and behaviors. Read the room accurately. Present executive-level recommendations to settle the matter. They decide on what should be done to strengthen team/department working relationships (cross-functional teams) and inter-functionalities, moving forward.
This is one of the hardest competencies to evaluate from a resume. Something perceivable only through behavioural questioning. Though more effectively, but also later in the process, through observed performance on the job.
How To Test For It In An Interview: Let the candidate describe a time they had to deliver difficult feedback to someone more experienced or more senior than they were at the time.
How to Score choices: Listen for areas of ownership in how they handled the person’s reaction. How they themselves reacted. Candidates confident in this part of their role as CoS will name details in the experience.
#4. Executive-Level Presence and Operational Maturity
This is the ability to hold an agenda and make decisions stick, without the CEO present or constant check-ins to validate each step.
Operational maturity isn’t calculated by years of experience. It’s judgment, exercised consistently under low to no supervision. A candidate with eight years of admin experience may have less operational maturity than someone with three years in a role that required constant judgment calls.
How To Test For It In An Interview: Ask the candidate to run a short, unscripted mock leadership update. Just 3 to 5 minutes. The topic will be one given by you on the spot.
How to Score choices: How’s their pacing control? Do they stay on topic? When they veer away from it, how do they get back? Do they close with a next step, rather than trailing off?
#5. Decision-Making With Limited Guidance or Independence
Here’s a competency that branches out two-way: whether the hire saves time and deals with organizational bottlenecks or adds another layer of management. Situations with incomplete information are common in fast-paced environments. Sometimes, there’s no clear pattern to fall back on or model. Yet frequent, step-by-step supervision is nowhere near the vocabulary of a Chief of Staff.
Sure, onboarding and the first few weeks or months might require some adjusting. But once they’re settled in, they should be able to come to decisions by extending the CEO’s capacity, implementing a policy agenda; the output of the CEO’s business strategy. The goal is fewer returns to the CEO’s desk.
How To Test For It In An Interview: Present a scenario with missing information (like a vendor dispute that doesn’t align with any part of the company policy) and ask the candidate to make a decision.
How to Score choices: Listen for the specifics. Candidates who say “I’d escalate this” by default, without first attempting their own approach, reveal dependency rather than decision-making prowess.
6. Financial and Commercial Acumen
Finance and budget fluency is another lane that leads to the Chief of Staff’s competencies. Even though they’re not ultimately responsible for company revenue and costs.
They should have enough commercial literacy to understand not only what a decision solves or doesn’t, but what a decision costs.
Having a finance background isn’t at all a requirement. What’s required (or is a plus on a resume) is comfort working with numbers. Another is the ability to link a decision to its financial impact, without constantly reaching out to finance for a translation.
How To Test For It In An Interview: Share a simplified budget or resourcing scenario and ask the candidate what course of action they’d recommend.
How to Score choices: Take note of the candidates who ask clarifying questions about priorities or constraints. Add them to those you’ll be moving into the next interview round.
Hiring Wrong Has a Cost You Won’t See Until It’s Too Late
If it were most other roles, signs of a wrong hire would be evident soon after onboarding. Not so with a Chief of Staff.
2,500 LinkedIn profiles and 108 surveys were used in a recent Chief of Staff-related study. The study’s findings showed how CoSs generally serve 1.5 to 3.1 years in the role.
The implication: it takes a year to discover that the person is a mismatch for what’s required of them. But by that time, you’d have already invested so much in time and cost that undoing it will be just as, if not more difficult than, the initial hiring process.
This is why SMBs should drill down on competency testing during the interview. Don’t go through it as though it were a formality. Think of the years that go to waste for course-correcting.
What To Do: Go through each question and be patient with candidates’ answers. Be even more patient as you compare answers after all the interviews. Asking the right questions now, though a rigorous process, can save a year or more of finding out you hired wrong later.
At the same time, the first 90 days of onboarding are a trial of judgment. A candidate who’s still incessantly asking for direction or validation after 3 months upon hiring isn’t the CoS for your business.
Learn How to Calculate Outsourcing Cost in Australia and use our Free Outsourcing Calculator below to see your own numbers for your Chief of Staff salary:
Company Size Changes Where the Experience Is From
McKinsey’s data found that company size has to do with how organisations source and hire for this role. Smaller companies tend to recruit chiefs of staff from operations and business services. Larger companies are more likely to take the role from finance or consulting. They fill the role internally by promoting a senior executive assistant to CoS.
Seniority weighs in on the hiring as well:
Larger companies were more likely to hire Chiefs of Staff from senior executive ranks: 45% came from Senior Vice President roles or above, compared with 33% in smaller companies.
For AU SMBs, a candidate whose CoS experience is from a multi-billion-dollar company may have fulfilled the role with far narrower decision rights and far more support staff. Someone whose background is in operations at a small or mid-sized business may have strengthened their skills in judgement. The kind your business requires. Even if their previous title was less prestigious.
What To Do: Ask about the size of the business and the team they operated in during their most recent CoS role. A “Chief of Staff” at a multi-billion-dollar company and a “Chief of Staff” at a 40-person business were not doing the same job, even if both wrote the identical title on LinkedIn.
How to Actually Test for The 6 Competencies in an Interview:
Use this table to test Chief of Staff candidates against the list of competencies the role warrants. Make it your own checklist or scorecard, and edit it if you want to add details related to your business.
This scorecard is a repeatable list you can use for every candidate and throughout the hiring process. Save it as a soft copy, and let it guide your (or your Hiring Manager’s) interviewing framework. No need to rewrite interview questions from scratch for each new candidate.
Should you need to add details about specific operations in your business, feel free to customize it.
Why Australian Businesses Are Finding This Competency Set Remotely
Where are Australian SMBs finding their CoSs? Some are doing their searches locally, but to little avail. There’s an ongoing shortage in specialized roles in local talent pools. And the ones that are available are pricing their services exorbitantly.
But business owners are learning they can get the same quality talent and CEO support elsewhere at a friendlier cost, with market location being the only denominator for the difference. They’re working with Remote Staff.
Remote Staff has been pairing AU SMBs with Chief of Staff roles for over 18 years. Instead of you doing the difficult work of vetting for a role that requires a different level of screening beyond resumes, we handle it all.
We make sure you’re not only getting an expert CoS, but are pairing you with a specialist who’s the right fit for what your operations need, within your specific industry. HR, onboarding, payroll, and admin work are on us.
We also help you stay compliant in other areas of your business. Learn about the Modern Slavery Act Australia and Payday Super Rules.
FAQs About What Is the Role of a Chief of Staff in Australia
Can a chief of staff work fully remote?
Yes. Remotely and offshore. None of the six core competencies, strategic communication, cross-functional problem-solving, emotional intelligence, executive presence, decision-making, or financial acumen requires physical presence in an office. As long as they have access to the right information and a solid working relationship with the CEO, they can fulfill their role well even if they’re not in the same room as the CEO, or anyone else from the workforce.
How do I know if a candidate is exaggerating their chief of staff experience?
Ask about the size of the company and the actual scope of their last role. Hiring data shows smaller companies tend to source Chiefs of Staff from operations backgrounds, while larger companies do so from finance, consulting, or promoted executive assistants.
Testing for competencies and decision-making frameworks using the interview guide above as your baseline can help recognize whether a candidate’s previous work experience is real or not.
What red flags should I watch for when interviewing a chief of staff candidate?
Not having the instinct to make the call, instead of escaping issues, is a sign. The CoS is supposed to extend the leadership of the CEO, so much of the work should stop with them. Also flag candidates who can’t tell you of a time they encountered feedback situations where they had to break difficult news to a colleague, especially one senior to them. Or any situation that required them to be emotionally intelligent at the moment.
How long does a chief of staff typically stay in the role?
Chiefs of Staff, the ideal ones per business, typically stay long with the business owner or company. They remain trusted strategic partners for years. However, the wrong fit stays only around 1.5 to 3 years, before the CEO discovers, over time, that they’re unable to fill the role as anticipated.
Don’t Stop With CoS Resumes. Ask Questions.
While some AU SMBs are quickly skimming through resumes and going rapid-fire with interview questions, take your time. Let candidates explain their way into telling you whether they understand the role or not. Whether they’re the right Chief of Staff who’ll work with you, and stretch your leadership, without you needing to go over every detail of every issue that arises through your workforce and operations.
A “Chief of Staff” isn’t a job title. It’s a set of behaviors that reduce executive load without reducing executive quality.
What smarter business owners are doing is clarifying what the role is about and what work is expected from it. They’re getting to know how candidates approach the work and how they think.
Ready to make leadership more effective by hiring for judgment? Call us or Request a Callback today. Let’s find your CoS.
Vaune Everis Cura has always been a writer in the truest sense, drawn to the art both as a personal creative pursuit and as a profession. Her experience penning content across digital marketing spaces and collaborating with business owners and market shapers has broadened her craft to include strategic direction and SEO insight. Having spent years with the InterContinental Hotels Group before stepping boldly into freelancing, she understands that at the centre of it all are genuine, meaningful brand–customer relationships built on purposeful, human content.
